The Almighty Ring

Swoosh!

After his failed attempt, the Ishtarian immediately leaped into the fortress’ teleportation point, escaping from Bison’s pursuit.

Jiang Fei approaced Kaa’Ina. “Are you alright?”

“Nothing serious, but my body needs some rest.”

Kaa’lna was in pretty bad shape. The Ishtarian’s poison may not be lethal, yet it still drained a significant portion of her strength.

Jiang Fei nodded. “Okay, you can rest for now.”

Bison marched towards Jiang Fei. “Sir, we are approaching the fortress’ core!”

“Noted. Everybody stay sharp, I have a bad feeling about this,” Jiang Fei warned.

“Yes, sir!”

Nodding in response, Bison led his team to open a path.

Boom boom boom…

Two hours later, a fierce battle took place once again.

“What happened?” asked Jiang Fei.

“Master Bison engaged with the enemy!” said the soldier in charge of communications.

“Let’s go and check it out.”

Jiang Fei instantly moved forward and soon arrived at the battlefield. Bison was fighting against a Valsalrian who was strong enough to fight him as an equal. There was no telling which one of the two had the upper hand in this fierce battle.

As he watched them fight, Jiang Fei asked, “0541, what is the progress with the fortress’ structure diagram?”

The moment they stepped foot into Dirk Slone Fortress, Jiang Fei had requested 0541 to hack into its central control system. This defense system was robust, it had taken 0541 days to breach it, and yet he was still unable to take over the whole central control system.

“Only a portion of it, I hate this type of biocomputer!”

0541 was desperate. As a super-smart artificial intelligence, he could breach and control a conventional smart system within minutes. However, the Valsalrians used bio-technology to develop almost everything.

From intergalactic spacecrafts to personal computers, they were all half-machine, half-living organism. The machine part was not a problem for 0541, but the biological part was tough to control. Even a super-smart artificial intelligence like 0541 had to spend considerable effort to crack those codes.

“Found any secrets yet?” asked Jiang Fei.

“So far, no. But according to my analysis, the Valsalrians seem to have abandoned the fortress. They plan to flee from the whole Alpha Sector!”

0541’s response surprised Jiang Fei. The Alpha Sector was a strategic location of the Menes System. Losing it would completely expose Aino’s Carldish Fort to the Trade Federation. Carldish Fort was Aino’s main base and second home. Once it was conquered, Aino’s forces would take an enormous hit if they were not completely annihilated.

Swoosh!

A bright light beamed the Valsalrian away from his battle with Bison. Obviously, he did not care about the fight.

“What is going on? Are they giving up on resisting?”

Jiang Fei still could not believe that the Valsalrian Army would give up the Alpha Sector.

Bison signaled his team and continued their march. “Push on!”

Two hours later, 0541 brought good news, “Captain, I have full control of the fortress’ central control system.”

“Commence data download immediately, I need to know what exactly is going on here!” demanded Jiang Fei.

“Yes, Captain!” replied 0541, immediately carrying out the task upon receiving the order.

The fortress’ data was vast and 0541 would need a long time to download and process everything.

Jiang Fei returned to the team leader. “Bison, how are things at the front? Is the advance going smoothly?”

“It was fine, we did not face strong resistance. Most of the soldiers were deported, only the skilled were left behind with their machines. They didn’t fight to the death, they just teleported away once they were at a disadvantage. It seems like they are not fighting back but just stalling,” reported Bison.

“Stalling? What are they up to?”

Jiang Fei was confused. He could not make sense of the Valsalrians’ actions.

“Beats me. We’ve carefully started our scanning, maybe some clue will pop up soon!” replied Bison.

Jiang Fei nodded. “Alright! Be careful.” Then, he addressed 0541, “0541, status report on data download.”

Compared to Bison’s team effort to search from room to room, Jiang Fei preferred to rely on 0541’s capability. Once the data download was completed, Jiang Fei believed that 0541 could give him the answer he wanted.

“Sir, according to the partial data I’ve downloaded, there was nothing special.”

“Good, send me the structure diagram!” said Jiang Fei, intending to give it to Bison’s team to ease their search.

“No problem!” said 0541, immediately sending the fortress’ structure diagram to Jiang Fei.

Jiang Fei passed it on to Bison. “Bison, plan your search according to this!”

“Sir, where did you get this? We can at least double our pace with this!”

Bison was thrilled with the structure diagram. They no longer had to loiter about in a maze.

Boom!

“Damn it! He’s back!”

“Stop him! Master Bison, the Ishtarian is back!”

…

A disturbance could be heard from not far away. It was caused by the Ishtarian skilled with venom that Bison defeated not long ago. He left a trail of dead bodies in his wake, as his poison was too strong for ordinary soldiers.

Bison’s eyes filled with anger. “Bastard, dodge this!”

These soldiers had followed him from the Ausvia System. After Jiang Fei assigned them to him, he never put their life at risk, even if it meant facing giant beasts himself. Now, a few of them lay dead on the ground because of this Ishtarian’s venom. Bison would never forgive him!

Smash!

One punch was enough to have the injured Ishtarian lying on the ground a few meters away. Blood slid down his chin from the corner of his mouth.

“Here! There’s someone here too!”

“Ah…”

Right after Bison handled the Ishtarian, noises came from the right side of his team. The Valsalrian he fought before had shown up as well.

“Damn it!”

Within seconds, Jiang Fei appeared in front of the Valsalrian.

Boom!

Jiang Fei did not hold back. With a blast of psychic power, his figure went dark in front of Valsalrian. The next thing the Valsarian saw was Jiang Fei’s fist right in front of his face!

Wham!

Valsalrian was sent flying away, yet he was not heavily injured. At his current state, Jiang Fei’s combat level was lower than nine million, which wasn’t enough to defeat that strong of an opponent.

At this critical moment, 0541 suddenly spoke, “Captain! I know why they evacuated the fortress!”